Re: RT list: Defending the Explicature

Andre Sytnyk compares 'lesbian' +> "related [as per Category of "Relation",
Grice] to Lesbos" with:
 

My family isn't very large. We are 5: my mother, my father, myself, grandpa
and grandma. We live on a farm. I have a pet. It's a p*ssy. [My grandpa keeps
poultry.] Sometimes my grandpa's c*ck scares my p*ssy...
 

----
 
Well, but I would proceed case by case. I seem to agree that we have here a  
case of what the OED calls 'fig.', i.e. figurative uses. On the other hand  
there's Kilgariff, who wrote, "I don't believe in word senses". I like the idea  
of 'fig.' since Grice (WOW, 33) refers to 'figure' (Gr. 'skhema') -- he 
actually  uses 'figure of speech' ('skhema lexeos') but the criterion by which the 
classic  authors distinguished these from other types of 'figures' is fuzzy at 
best. In  any case, Grice does have 'metaphora' as one of them, and for 
'cock' (rooster)  perhaps we may need to add synecdoche and metonymia.
 
In a  way it compares to what I have elsewhere have called "Chomsky's female 
dogs",  since in the case of 'lesbian', the predicate with me 'gynotropic' and 
 'arriantropic' (male-oriented) etc.  Harnish reports Chomsky's  problem with 
predicate extension, though. Consider 'bitch'.  For Chomsky, the semantic 
structure is  +CANIS -MALE. For Chomsky,  'female' is '- male', since all 
features are binary (in MIT). Now, Harnish, who  also studied in MIT, found out that 
the principle violets Grice (He wrote  'violates', but I prefer the other 
spelling). Harnish considers Grice's  example:
 
"Speranza is meeting a woman this evening." implicates "the woman is not  his 
sister, mother, wife, or close platonic friend" (Grice WOW). Harnish notes:  
"But does  "Speranza is meeting an adult human female this evening." carry  
the _same_ implicature? It seems not, and this creates the following difficulty, 
 emphasised by Chomsky in conversation. Grice wants to say that any _way_ or  
_manner_ of saying the same thing i slikely to have the same generalized  
implicature. So if the above does not (in all likelihood) have the requisite  
implicature it should not count as another way or manner of saying (the same  
thing as) the original." "And this would be the case if either: (a) these two  
expressions ['bitch' = 'female dog'] did not count as 'saying the same thing'  
when uttered in the appropriate context [And Geary allows for context  
sensitivity], or  (b) these were not different 'ways' or 'manners' of  saying the same 
thing. There is reason to deny both (i) and (ii). First, recall  that 'what 
is said' was in part a function of (or at least 'closely related to')  the 
conventional meaning of the words uttered (WOW, p.30), and presumably the  two 
expressions in question are paraphrases. So, other things being equal, one  would 
expect the same thing to have been said. Second, under the maxim of  Manner, 
relating _how_ what is said is to be said) we find, 'be brief'. [And  clearly 
'bitch' is briefer than 'female dog']. So clearly we could generate an  
implicature off of the exapnded paraphrase. For instance, A says,
 
"I'm going to meet J. L. (Austin)". B says, 'Is J. L. (Austin) a  man or a 
woman?' A says,  "Well, J. L.' (Austin) s an adult human male." "I  would think 
that A implied something like the opinion that s/he did not view J.  L. Austin 
as particularly sexually attractive or desirable in a feminine  ('womanish') 
way, and he did this by conspicuously picking the verbose  equivalent thereby 
(conspicuously) avoiding the lexeme 'man' and so disavowing  some of its usual 
suggestions in these contexts." "That it has these suggestions  cannot be 
doubted in view of pairs like, "He is a really (good, etc.) man' vs.  'He is a 
real (good, etc.) adult human male'."
 
One problem with comparing 'lesbian' with 'you're the cream in my coffee'  
though, is that Grice notes the abductive step includes the categorial  
impossibility of the addressee really being _cream_. With 'lesbian', however,  the 
context will, we hope, exclude as categorially _improbable_ but never  
_impossible_ that the addressee is 'related' to the Isle of Lesbos. I would  have to 
work with rooster and pussy with more detail to get familiar with  idiosyncratic 
explicatures, though. 
 
J. L. 
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